IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rsmrxx/v14y2011i3p237-245.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Drivers of illicit drug use regulation in Australian sport

Author

Listed:
  • Bob Stewart
  • Daryl Adair
  • Aaron Smith

Abstract

Most Australian sport stakeholders not only believe that government regulation is a good thing, but also assume that intervention in the drug-use problem will improve sport's social outcomes and operational integrity. In this paper we examine the regulation of illicit drug use in Australian sport through an interrogation of two cases: the Australian Football League and the National Rugby League. Using Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual frames of social field, capital, and habitus, we aim to secure a clearer understanding of the drivers of Australian sport's illicit drug regulations by (1) identifying those stakeholders who set the drug regulation agenda, (2) revealing the values and dispositions that underpin these regulations, and (3) explaining how dominant stakeholders go about sustaining their position and marginalising those stakeholders with opposing drug regulation claims. Our results show that Australian sport's drug-use regulations are driven by a set of values and dispositions that views sport as an instrument for shaping the character of its participants, and drugs as a threat to sport's moral fabric and good standing. The dominant stakeholders, comprising the Commonwealth Government, its sport agencies, and the major governing bodies for sport, imposed these values and dispositions on peripheral stakeholders by designing a drugs-in-sport social field that yielded capital and power to only those participants who endorsed these values and dispositions. Peripheral stakeholders – including players, their agents, and drug-treatment professionals – who mostly shared different values and dispositions, were sidelined, and denied the opportunity of adding to their already limited supplies of capital, power, and policy making influence.

Suggested Citation

  • Bob Stewart & Daryl Adair & Aaron Smith, 2011. "Drivers of illicit drug use regulation in Australian sport," Sport Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 237-245, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:14:y:2011:i:3:p:237-245
    DOI: 10.1016/j.smr.2011.02.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1016/j.smr.2011.02.001
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.smr.2011.02.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gowthorp, Lisa & Greenhow, Annette & O’Brien, Danny, 2016. "An interdisciplinary approach in identifying the legitimate regulator of anti-doping in sport: The case of the Australian Football League," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 48-60.
    2. Kitchin, P.J. & David Howe, P., 2013. "How can the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu assist sport management research?," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 123-134.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rsmrxx:v:14:y:2011:i:3:p:237-245. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rsmr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.